Avant-garde Ceramics: Umberto Boccioni

"Italian painter and sculptor. Boccioni was the foremost painter and sculptor of the Italian Futurist movement, which developed in the years immediately preceding World War I. In addition to being an artist, Boccioni was the leading technical theorist of the movement. His principles of sculpture, in particular, shaped the mixed-media and dynamic productions of the twentieth century ... "

"Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) was the leading artist of Italian Futurism. During his short life, he produced some of the movement’s iconic paintings and sculptures, capturing the color and dynamism of modern life in a style he theorized and defended in manifestos, books, and articles ... "

"The Futurists’ celebration of the fast pace and mechanical power of the modern world is emphasized here in the sculpture’s dynamism and energy ... "

"‘Let us not offend Boccioni with a funeral eulogy.’ This is how F.T. Marinetti, leader of the Futurist movement, began his introduction to the retrospective exhibition commemorating the death of the artist Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916). Italy’s avant-garde famously favoured the living over the dead and Marinetti recognised the tragic irony of the situation ... "

"... Although Boccioni deserves a great amount of credit for evolving the style now associated with Italian Futurism, he first matured as a Neo-Impressionist painter, and was drawn to landscape and portrait subjects. It was not until he encountered Cubism that he developed a style that matched the ideology of dynamism and violent societal upheaval that lay at the heart of Futurism. Boccioni borrowed the geometric forms typical of the French style, and employed them to evoke crashing, startling sounds to accompany the depicted movement ... "